Sunday, February 26th 2012

A little background...

At the beginning of January, my husband's brother's wife Lisa was diagnosed with a huge brain tumor and had a surgery that removed about half of it. At first it didn't look too bad, the doctors thought it might be a stage 1 or 2 and that radiation treatment would be able to eliminate the remainder of the tumor. A few weeks later, they got the news that it was stage 3: a diffuse (spreading) anaplastic astrocytoma, an aggressive tumor that even with radiation and chemotherapy would most likely take her life within the next few years.

We just kept thinking how could this happen to a young (only 30!), healthy mother of 4 young children who is thin and adorable and loves to run races? Everyone in our family feels so helpless, we are trying to support her and just fasting and praying for a miracle.

I have always been interested in nutrition, I'm sure I got it from my mom: she used to pack us homemade whole wheat bread sticks, orange juice and carrots for car trip snacks and serve not just one, but two vegetables at dinner. I took at nutrition class at BYU and taught about healthy eating at church twice in my ward and once in my mom's. I thought I knew a lot about food, cancer and other diseases, the human body (I was a cell biology major), and what was important to eat or not eat. But as time went on I became more confused with what I read, some of which was contradictory, and felt frustrated with my sometimes unsuccessful attempts at healthy meals, especially when they took a lot of time, which I had less and less of as we had more kids and my husband started his own dental practice. So we ate out more, ate more processed foods and fewer vegetables. I knew how to lose weight after having a baby by eating less sugar, more raisin bran and cottage cheese so I felt like that was good enough.

Then Sunday night while I was at a friend's house I mentioned my sister-in-law and her cancer. My friend asked if I had watched the documentary Forks Over Knives. We hadn't, so she explained the premise that a "whole foods plant based diet" can not only prevent cancer (and other diseases) but actually shrink an existing tumor. Well that caught my attention and we resolved to watch it the next day.